[1] It charts the fortunes of the Broomes, a theatrical dynasty, over two hundred years from Queen Anne's reign through to the present cinema era.

He befriends an old witch who before she dies teaches him a spell to be passed from father to daughter to son and on through generations of alternating gender; which makes the spellbinder (including him) irresistibly charming to others.

A visiting theatre company allows Richard to play the part of Oberon and he grows up to be a famous actor, patronised by the nobility.

He takes over his father’s company and builds a new London theatre, the Gloriana, where he puts on a satirical play, written by himself, which is a hit.

William takes his mistress Miss Beverley on tour to America and becomes temporarily estranged from Lady Lettice who is left in England.

The performance causes a mental breakdown from which Lady Lettice nurses him back to health and they have a third son, Harry (Henry I, King of England).

Lady Lettice’s brother Lionel returns from overseas and her oldest son Russel (William Rufus), without his parents’ consent, starts to act at the Gloriana.

When Lionel waves to him at the end of the performance from a box, William mistakes him for an apparition of his own dead father Robert and has a heart attack, dying on the spot.

Lettice blames Russel for his father’s death and refuses to support his acting career, which in turn leads to a falling out with Robin.

The youngest brother, Harry (Henry I), grows up as the apple of his mother Lettice’s eye and learns the arts of acting and theatrical management in London.

Harry falls in love with Maud (Matilda of Scotland), the granddaughter of an impoverished Irish baronet, who is being brought into society by Lettice’s widowed sister, Lady Rosina.

Rosina had in her youth been in love with Maud’s grandfather before making a conventional marriage to a richer man arranged by her mother, Duchess Hilaret.

Robin has written a savage autobiographical play with his wife in mind for the starring role which she successfully auditions for under an assumed name in a production put on at the Genista (a Broome theatre) by his nephew Harry.

Harry decides to nurture the Broome fortunes for the next generation: in particular, Stephen (son of his beloved uncle Robin) and his own children Gilly and Donna.

Maud discovers a shabby music hall on the unfashionable south bank of the River Thames, and Harry buys it for her.

Gilly persuades his father to teach him the Broome charm or spell, which brings him bad luck, because by rights it should go from male to female, and Harry has failed to pass it on to his daughter Donna.

Donna is not a social success but agrees to marry a much older man, Sir Joscelyn Pallas (Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor), an Irish connection of her aunt Rosina.

Gilly takes the ocean liner Sylvania to join his uncle Russel on tour in America but it sinks and he dies (echoing William Adelin’s death in the White Ship disaster of 1120).

Donna is relieved, feeling this takes the pressure off her to replace Gilly as heir, but Adelaide has a miscarriage, and it becomes clear that there will be no children from her marriage to Harry.

The letter agrees to fund the estate, install a man to run it, and pay Donna a personal allowance greater than the one she asked for, sufficient to support her and her sisters-in-law for life.

The first night dinner doubles as a wedding feast, but the speech is made by Donna’s uncle Russel, not her father Harry.

When, eventually, Harry does speak, he refers to the failure of his own personal performance in the play and appears demented.

When Lady Lettice moves towards him to remonstrate, she falls and catches the tablecloth, causing a candlestick to set fire to her clothes.

She insists on playing Mazeppa in a traditional costume, which her husband considers indecent, in a quest to earn as much money as she can for their son Edmund.

Stephen buys a small theatre behind Regent Street for his side of the family but it is Donna who flourishes, putting on Robin’s plays.

Lewis Wybird (King Louis VII of France), the bachelor grandson of Lady Lettice’s banker brother, who has inherited some Broome character from his ancestress Hilaret, diversifies his London property portfolio by buying up the Gloriana.

Lewis Wybird (King Louis VII of France) becomes engaged to marry a 22 year old heiress, Elinor Dale (Eleanor of Aquitaine), who had played with Edmund as a child.

Elinor is an independent success professionally but the marriage comes under strain when she discovers that her husband has an illegitimate son, Willie Marshall, at a London day school.

Elinor has a healthier relationship with all of them, but her favourite is John, although his grandmother Donna sees in him troubling traces of the worst character traits of previous generations of the Broomes.

In 1966 it was made into an eight-part television series Broome Stages by the BBC featuring Gwen Watford, Richard Pasco and Robin Phillips.